On May 7, DU hosted the Impact of Driverless Mobility conference, bringing together a number of experts in different focuses related to autonomous vehicles. Discussion ranged from the practical to the wishful, but one point that emerged clearly was that vehicle sharing will be one of the most important features of future mobility as a way to combat congestion and high transit costs. Buses are one of our primary shared vehicles currently, and the event speakers indicated that buses are promising focuses of improvement in the future. For those hoping to see better mass transit systems in cities but uncertain that the self-driving car takeover will solve all of our problems, a focus on better buses, autonomous or not, is a good goal for city leaders to keep promoting.
Infrequent and inconsistent service is often a problem commuters see with using buses as their primary method of transportation, and the “last mile problem” also comes into play—a bus stop may be inconveniently far from either a rider’s home or their destination, adding time to the overall trip. Though these problems may push some people into their cars instead, there is a considerable number of people for whom bus transit is their only option—an assessment of the demographics of bus riders from the American Public Transit Association found that less than one half of bus riders have a vehicle available. When we talk about future goals for transit and mobility, it is important to remember that buses are a form of transportation that is accessible across a wide range of incomes and physical abilities.
In a May 9 article about buses and technology, CityLab acknowledged the interesting role that autonomous buses could fill—they have the potential to be more programmable since they follow a set route, and this could mean more frequent service by supplementing service of human-driven buses. But the article also points to other ways that buses can get better without having to be futuristic autonomous vehicles. New York City and Los Angeles are already looking into switching their bus fleets over to electric, and though acquisition costs are still higher for electric buses, maintenance and energy costs are lower in the long term.
Denver has already experienced the popularity of electric buses with frequent service—the Free Mall Ride on 16th Street Mall went fully electric in 2016, and even before then, from 2014-2015, weekly ridership was approximately 44,000 people (the Mall Ride is also free which clearly means more riders). If electric buses become cheaper to operate in the long term and encourage more people to ride, possibly lowering already-subsidized fare, this could impact what service Denver is able to provide.
Another major upside of buses is that they use existing roadways and are therefore much more financially feasible than building miles of new light rail or train track. The challenge is how to best use those existing roadways—buses still get stuck in traffic and may not arrive as frequently as riders would like. Here, Denver can look to Seattle, the one major city where bus ridership has actually gone up—Seattle has worked on giving more right-of-way to buses, designating bus-only lanes to keep capacity high and transport more people per hour than regular lanes. Denver’s improvements will have to be specific to our city and our roads, but helping bus right-of-way is a good way to maximize how efficient service can be.
Goals for buses in the future may be as practical as looking at traffic flow and lane use or may be as futuristic as autonomous vehicles, but what matters most is that bus improvements stay in the discussion of how to make city (and suburb) transit better. Buses remain one of the most accessible methods of transit, and for many people, they are one of the only available options. We shouldn’t look at buses as outdated and unreliable but rather as one of the areas of mass transit with high potential for improvement.
